Elizabeth Adams's Blog, page 76

Mexican poetry in the garden

He hands me the white book
by the flowering fava beans:
Octavio writing of cinnamon sails
billowing with wind --
the breathing of breasts.

--

At the garden today, a friend lent me a bilingual edition of the complete poems of Octavio Paz. I opened it to the poem below which we read together. My Spanish is very poor but I recognize many words  - canela, for instance: cinnamon; iglesia: church - and can figure out others. This friend, who is Canadian-American, lived in Mexico for quite a while and knows the country well; he's fluent in Spanish and French and English, and I am envious! He's away for a week and asked me to water his vegetable garden, in a different community garden than mine, closer to my studio. So J. and I met him there and he showed us his fava beans and tomatoes, his lettuces and mustards, and the routine of watering, and then we had a wide-ranging conversation about plants, politics, poetry, and places we've lived and visited, while sitting in the very welcome sun.

I've copied the first two stanzas out in Spanish, and the entire poem in English. It's from Paz's book East Slope, poems written between 1962 and 1968.

 

COCHIN

1.
Para vernos pasar
se alza de puntillas
dimunata y blanquisima
entre los cocoteros,
la iglesia portuguesa

2.
Velas color canela.
El viento se levanta :
respiración de senos.

 

1.
Standing on tiptoe
to watch us go by
among the coco-palms
tiny and white,
the Portugese church.

2.
Cinnamon-colored sails.
The wind picks up.
breasts in breath.

3.
With shawls of foam,
jasmine in their hair
and earrings of gold
they go off to six o'clock mass
not in Mexico City or Cádiz:
in Travancore.

4.
Beating more furiously
before the Nestorian patriarch:
my heretical heart.

5.
In the Christian cemetery graze
dogmatic
     probably Shivaite
cows.

6.
The same eyes see, the same afternoon:
the bougainvillaea with its thousand arms,
elephantiasis with its violet legs,
between the pink sea and the jaundiced palms.

 

A Few Recent Tanka and Haiku

What right do I have
to this morning's brilliance
its pellucid peace?

In the ancestral cities

distant cousins wake weeping.

--

The million green leaves
above me cannot shelter
one child of Taksim.

--

My arch on your thigh
slow movements in the pale light
rain again today.

A Calm Interior

Today I put some color on a drawing that I did when visiting our family near Philadelphia. I started on a left-hand page, drawing this brass coffee pot and the cross-stitch tapestry hanging on the wall. When I moved over to the right-hand page and the continuation of the shelf under another window, the scale of things got distorted. It was pretty funny. I kept going, but the drawing/painting doesn't work as a whole; the composition is bad when the tapestry is right in the middle, and the coffee pot looks as large as the lamp! It's OK as two halves though.

One of my teachers told me never to be afraid to cut things up or to look at drawings and paintings using cropping tools. He was right; it often helps, and it's so much easier now, in digital image editing programs!

That's an Inuit sculpture between the lamp and plate; it's a mother leaning over with a baby in her arms, perhaps to pick it up. The mother has on a thick parka and mittens and the baby is all swaddled too; it's carved in soapstone. My brother-in-law, now retired, was a doctor in ob/gyn, and he has collected Inuit prints and sculptures, especially those depicting childbirth and mothers and children, since his medical school days in Canada when the annual Cape Dorset print editions were being offered by just a few galleries. However, the little figure on the windowsill is an Asian dancer, and I think it probably dates back to my sister-in-law's days in India. Their home has a very calm feeling, with white walls, lots of books, and very little clutter. If we'd had more time there, I'm sure I would have drawn a lot more.

New Specs

Well, I recently got new glasses. These are especially for singing and for drawing: the two occasions when I have to be able to see equally well up close, and far away, and shift quickly between the two distances. Until recently, I've been wearing my contact lenses for singing, with a pair of readers down on my nose that I look over when I glance up at the conductor. But I don't wear my contacts regularly -- especially not for days like this, when I'm at the computer most of the time: my eyes are drier than they used to be,  and by the end of the day they're tired.

Still, that routine was working all right, but when I started doing more outdoor drawing I really had problems. I never knew when I was going to want to sketch something, so I might have on my distance glasses...and then not be able to see the drawing paper. Or I'd try my reading glasses, the prescription ones corrected for my astigmatism, and then not be able to see the subject well enough. Outdoors in bright sunlight with my contacts on, I absolutely have to wear sunglasses- but then what about the readers?

Some of my friends have gotten progressives, but for singing, almost all of them have had problems, because (they say) you have to move your head to see properly. I finally decided to get a pair of old-fashioned bifocals, which is what these are, in a sort of hip, oversized frame. I ordered them online, the same way I've bought several other pairs, and they were very inexpensive. Better yet: they work beautifully! I can't use them on the computer, but that's fine: I just continue to use my reading-only glasses for that.

What really surprised me, though, was that I had expected a really visible line or half-moon shape, but when these are on my face, you can barely see the semicircular bifocal part. Is this something new? In the close-up below, you can just barely see it. The stigma of bifocals may be a thing of the past: my vanity is intact, and there hasn't been any adjustment period at all. What a relief!

 

Sunday, Between Time

"Once in a while it vanishes - in the sense that I become deaf to
beauty for a week or two or three. This coming and going of the inner
life - because this is what it is - is a curse and a blessing. I don't
need to explain why it's a curse. A blessing because it brings about a
movement, an energy which, when it peaks, creates a poem. Or a moment of
happiness."

  - Adam Zagajewski (via Whiskey River)

The underground food court is filled with the sounds of voices and cutlery and plates and plastic trays reverberating against the low ceiling, but this is where there's WIFI so after finishing my lunch of Indian fast food I call my father, who's been trying to call me, and after we talk I go up the escalator and decide to visit the English-language bookstore a few blocks away. When I walk in I'm greeted by a cheerful woman who asks me if I know about today's special. No, I don't. Buy any three items and get the fourth free, she tells me, gesturing at a display of colorful pillows and decorative throws behind her. It can be anything, she says. Books, gifts...Thank you, I say, moving away and looking around with dismay; every time I come here it seems like there are fewer books and more housewares, soaps, candles, and expensively-packaged cookies and chocolates. Worse, there's hardly a book I want to read. I do one circuit of the second floor, and stand for a few minutes in front of Poetry, a small display of two book cases at shoulder height. On the endcaps are a recent collection of essays by James Wood, an edition of the Odyssey, and a volume of poems by local hero Leonard Cohen. I'm looking for the latest Adam Zagajewski, but it's not here; none of his books are. Instead I pull out the new Anne Carson, Red doc>, and recoil at the price. She's Canadian so most of her books are on the shelf: Plainwater, The Beauty of the Husband, Autobiography of Red, NOX,translations of Euripides and Sappho. The price for the new hardcover is just too high, I'll probably buy it in paperback later online or used -- the irony of which is not lost on me -- and then I think about having a coffee and sitting down in the cafe for the forty-five minutes before rehearsal, but decide against it and walk out, rather sad and annoyed, but tell myself to let it go, and I do.

Elegy

My mother's birthday was yesterday, June 9th; she would have been 89. I was singing all day, which would have made her happy -- she knew how important music is to me, and during the period of my life where I wasn't doing much of it and was rather unhappy, she finally suggested, gently, that I might consider getting back to it. I did; she had been right.

She wasn't a fan of the Church, nor was she a believer, though she faithfully attended services every Sunday during the long years when my dad and I were singing in the choir; she did it for us, not for any other reason. For her, Nature was holiness -- that and loving those closest to her. But through a keen intelligence, a great deal of reading, observation of human life, and personal challenges that included the Depression, World War II, and chronic asthma, she developed a personal philosophy that was far more robust than that of many "religious" people; it stood her in good stead her entire life, including her last years. She was tremendously patient, generous, and kind; industrious about whatever needed to be done; and almost never complained about personal problems. My admiration for her grows as I too get older; I miss her actual presence but am happy to continually notice that her love and wisdom stay with me.

She'd be quite amused to know that my father, at 88, played table tennis and came in second in his age bracket in the New York State Senior Games on Saturday.

That day, while he was competing, I spent some time listening to Ian Bostridge singing English songs by Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughn Williams. Somehow Bostridge hadn't been on my radar until I visited Teju last weekend, when he played an episode of the BBCs "Desert Island Discs" for us featuring the selections of Vikram Seth, author of A Suitable Boy. When I heard Bostridge's voice, I knew I had to listen to a lot more. Some people prefer Peter Pears for Britten, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and others for German lieder; be that as it may, I think Bostridge's voice is perfectly suited to these very English works by Vaughn Williams, and I like his interpretations of Britten, too.

I wasn't consciously thinking of my mother as I was listening, nor is this her kind of music, but for me it created a reflective and elegiac mood that reminded me of the countryside, and only afterward connected with my mother. Later, on Sunday evening, I sat down at the keyboard and played through a bunch of jazz standards that she really did like. There was a bouquet of yellow roses from my garden in her Wedgewood pot, too, adding their spicy fragrance to the night air as I played and thought of her sitting in her favorite chair, listening while she read or knitted, the screen door open so that the sounds of insects, birds and frogs filled the silences. When I finished there would be tea and a little something sweet, and before going to bed, we'd step out on the deck and look up at the stars.

 

JOHN DONNE - HOLY SONNET 17

Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her last debt

To nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,

And her soul early into heaven ravished,

Wholly in heavenly things my mind is set.

Here the admiring her my mind did whet

To seek thee, God; so streams do show the head;

But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed,

A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet.

But why should I beg more love, whenas thou

Dost woo my soul, for hers off'ring all thine,

And dost not only fear lest I allow

My love to saints and angels, things divine,

But in thy tender jealousy dost doubt

Lest the world, flesh, yea devil put thee out.

 

A Philadelphia Garden

Alliums, poppies, and veronica at Chanticleer.

We're back in Montreal now, after a long drive yesterday. While in the outskirts of Philadelphia, visiting my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, one of the nicest things we did was to visit Chanticleer, a large public garden on a former estate. It's quite different from Les Quatre Vents, the incredible garden we visited in the Charlevoix -- smaller, more urban, less quirky -- and planted in a considerably warmer growing climate. In fact, my initial reaction was zone envy.

More alliums planted through ornamental grasses in the bulb lawn.

The garden has a number of areas, closer and further from the house, each planted differently. One leit-motif throughout, during these weeks of early June, were giant alliums, which appeared everywhere but made a different effect in each context.

A great strength of the garden as a whole was its masterful use of texture, and of unusual plants to achieve this. In one planting I noticed frilly red lettuces, beet greens, and crinkled apple-green kale mixed in with more predictable perennials to add their own particular textures and colors.

The garden also plays with ideas of scale, with long views and meadows contrasting with smaller, more intimate tableaux.

Succulents reflect in a flat pool in one room of "The Ruin."

These hens-and-chickens are planted in an armature of -- what else? -- chicken wire lined with sphagnum moss.

In the "Library," another room in The Ruins, visitors can browse the collection of carved stone books...

Mature trees and flowering shrubs form a backbone for the smaller gardens. And the Korean dogwood was in bloom.

Have you ever seen anything lovelier?

The lily pond contained not only pink waterlilies and lotus flowers, but Eastern painted turtles and many koi.

The cutting garden.

And another view of the poppy hillside: almost everything was in shades of purple/fuschia/lavender to contrast with the brilliant crimson poppies: a banquet of color.

For me, a garden like this is a living artwork, a giant sculpture. I find it endlessly inspiring, not just for my own gardens but for painting, textile design, printmaking -- any place where texture, color and form work together. And of course it's also a source of genuine joy and calm.

In the next post I'll show you a gallery exhibition of sculpture that alludes to very different forms and ideas.

Creme de Cassis, and Verrazano

Creme de Cassis and a Platter of Shrimp, pen and watercolor on paper, approx.11 x 5". (click for larger view)

On Sunday we lingered at the big table long into the night, drinking white wine with creme de cassis and eating grilled shrimp and rice and salad, and cold Indian spiced beef, and talking about books and writers, poetry and life, while rain streaked the windows and cooled the overheated air. Finally we slept, but rose fairly early, talked some more, and left New York around noon to head toward Philadelphia to visit our family here.

We went via the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which neither J. nor I hd ever crossed before. It costs an astronomical $15.00 to cross, but the bridge -- which I've admired from the Brooklyn Bridge for years -- is absolutely beautiful, and the view back into New York Harbor is nothing short of magnificent. I'm sorry I didn't get a good shot of that view to show you, but we were moving too fast and the sky was still grey from the previous night's storm.

The bridge spans the Narrows, the narrowest part of the harbor between Brooklyn and Staten Island. It's named for the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, who was the first known European navigator in the service of the King of France to enter New York Harbor and the Hudson River. It was, far a time, the longest bridge span in the world; it's still the longest in the Americas and the ninth longest anywhere. I guess I'm a bit of a bridge nut, especially suspension bridges; what I like most about it is its delicacy.

Here's an aerial shot of the bridge, showing its position at the mouth of the Hudson and New York Harbor. (Wikipedia commons)

 

 

Sketches during Breakfast

Turkish Sausages and Oranges, pen and watercolor on paper, approx. 11" x 5", 6-2-2013

We're with T.C. and K. at their home for a couple of days. Our breakfast this morning was very attenuated...two hours at least, spilling almost directly into a mid-afternoon lunch. There's been a great deal of picture-taking, drawing, art-talk, as well as eating, and even a little sleep in spite of the humidity and heat. It's wonderful to be here.

 

Jonathan. pencil on paper, approx 6"x5". 6-2-2013

Yesterday we visited the Brooklyn Museum of Art and saw several great shows; I'll post photos from there later on.

Alternation

In spite of depressing world news, local corruption scandals, tax havens for the wealthiest corporations, life on a small scale is good, and busy. I'm going away soon on a short trip to visit friends and family, my cold is almost entirely gone and thoughI (of course) passed it on to J., he's getting better quickly. The weather has finally turned warm. I spent yesterday and today working through my to-do list: trying to find tall bamboo stakes for the delphinium plants in my garden (none to be found in any of the stores I visited); working in said garden to get it ready so I can leave; finishing hem of skirt and hem of skirt lining and doing a final press; figuring out what clothes to take; doing some ironing; making arrangements for Manon; doing the laundry;  picking up a package at the post office and going to the pharmacy; bringing the plants from their winter home in our studio to the summer home on the terrace; making lunch and dinner and trying to use up everything in the refrigerator.

So this is the last day of May, the month when I thought I'd be posting a drawing every day. Thinking back, I really started the drawing project in earnest at the beginning of April. It turned out to be too big a commitment to post a finished drawing here every day, but the best part is that I seem to have gotten back into the habit of sketching and drawing regularly -- almost every day, if not every single one. I'm happy about that, and happy about many of the drawings themselves.

In my weird and wonderful life, this has been the way it's been: unable to choose whether to write, draw, or do music, I've stayed involved in all of them, but kind of moved the individual pieces forward one at a time, in an alternating but unplanned way. There have been periods where I took a lot of music lessons and practiced very intensely, periods where I've done a lot of art, years where I mostly wrote and worked hard on getting better that that. It would have been a lot easier and perhaps more satisfying -- I'm not so sure -- to have a single clear focus and achieve real mastery in it to the exclusion of everything else, but it was never possible in my case, and finally I made my peace with the fact that this was the way I was happiest. One of my choir friends told me her husband is also big believer in what he calls "alternation" - doing one thing with a lot of discipline and intention for a while, and then switching gears. (I guess it's like cross-training, for you athletes out there.) All I know is that this is the way that works for me. Throughout my entire life, whether I was studying it or not, music has been a constant source of joy and solace, both alone and with other people. I haven't always written, or done art, partly because for many years I was doing professional graphic design all day long. I've also always read a lot, and always done something creative "with my hands:" art, sewing, gardening, cooking, knitting, even if it was just a little project that got worked on now and then. I used to spend a lot more time out in nature. For the past ten years, this blog has been another constant.

There are a lot of factors at work, too, for instance the need for solitude, balanced with the need for community; how one's work interacts with one's free time; family and community obligations; relationships; space; money; access to sources of inspiration in daily life.

Any thoughts on your own life, and pursuit of your passions? What helps you move forward, and what holds you back? What are the things you've always wanted to pursue, but maybe never had the time for?